Monday, July 31, 2017

Muslims love Jesus and Mary (audio)

Matthew Bell (PRI's The World , July 31, 2017); Editors, Wisdom Quarterly
A Christian man, portraying the Jew Jesus Christ, is hung on a cross during a re-enactment of the crucifixion on Good Friday in al-Qraya village, in southern Lebanon, April 14, 2017. Muslims also revere Jesus as a prophet. In the Quran, the story of Jesus describes him as a messenger, a messiah, and the “word of God” (Ali Hashisho/Reuters).


Who's that good Muslim prophet on the cross?
[Can we all just get along?] Muslims revere [the Jew] Jesus, too, but this Turkish author sees the Islamic Jesus in a new light.

Newcomers to the Quran [Muslim bible] might be surprised to find that the Prophet Muhammad is only mentioned a handful of times in the Muslim holy book.


The prophet whose name is mentioned most? That would be Moses -- indeed, the very same Moses from the Book of Exodus.
Jesus, the son of Mary, is mentioned numerous times in the Quran. And the Islamic version of the Jesus story, it turns out, tracks quite closely to the one that Christians know. 

The Quran has a whole chapter about Mary, who is the only woman mentioned by name in the holy book.

Christians hate Islam. Thanks, Republicans.
In one scene after the birth of her child, Mary is confronted by holy men accusing her of being impure. That is when baby Jesus speaks up in his mother’s defense, performing one of a couple of miracles that never show up in the New Testament version of the Jesus story. 

About 15 years ago, the Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol was handed a copy of the New Testament for the first time by a missionary on the street in Istanbul. Akyol says he went home and started reading it, and what struck him most was how much of the story of Jesus was already so familiar to him as a Muslim.

Such as the angel visiting the Virgin Mary to tell her that she would give birth to a son, and the description of Jesus as a messenger of God. “It was so similar,” Akyol says. More

What did the other Christians believe?

The Lost [Gnostic] Gospels: What They Don't Want Us to Know

No comments: